Ḥammād al-Rāwiya ( ar, حماد الراوية, 'Ḥammād the transmitter') (Abu-l-Qasim Hammad ibn Abi Laila Sapur (or ibn Maisara)) (8th century), Iranian scholar born in Kufa. He was of Daylamite origin. The date of his birth is given by some as 694 AD, by others as 714. He is considered the first person to have systematically collected

Arabic poetry Arabic poetry ( ar, الشعر العربي ''ash-shi‘ru al-‘Arabīyyu'') is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry ...

.Monique Bernards, "Pioneers of Arabic Linguistic Studies." Taken from In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture, pg. 213. Ed.

Bilal Orfali Bilal Orfali is a Lebanese scholar of Arabic language and literature. He currently serves as Sheikh Zayed Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut. He is considered an expert on Arabic prose and poetry, especially d ...

. Leiden:

Brill Publishers Brill Academic Publishers (known as E. J. Brill, Koninklijke Brill, Brill ()) is a Dutch international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, Netherlands. With offices in Leiden, Boston, Paderborn and Singapore, Brill today publishes 27 ...

, 2011. He was reputed to be the most learned man of his time in regard to the "days of the Arabs" (i.e. their chief battles), their stories, poems, genealogies and dialects. He is said to have boasted that he could recite a hundred long 'qasidas for each letter of the alphabet (i.e. rhyming in each letter) and these all from pre-Islamic times, apart from shorter pieces and later verses. Hence his name Hammad ar-Rawiya, " the reciter of verses from memory." The Umayyad caliph

Walid Waleed (), also spelt as Walid, Oualid, or Velid, is an Arabic-language masculine given name meaning ''newborn child''. Given name Waleed *Waleed Ali, Kuwaiti footballer *Waleed Aly, Egyptian-origin Australian journalist *Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibr ...

is said to have tested him, the result being that he recited 2900 gasidas of pre-Islamic date and Walid gave him 100,000 dirhems. He was favoured by Yazid II and his successor

Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ( ar, هشام بن عبد الملك, Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik; 691 – 6 February 743) was the tenth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 724 until his death in 743. Early life Hisham was born in Damascus, the administra ...

, who brought him up from Iraq to

Damascus )), is an adjective which means "spacious". , motto = , image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg , image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg , seal_type = Seal , map_caption = , ...

. Arabian critics, however, say that in spite of his learning he lacked a true insight into the genius of the Arabic language, and that he made more than thirty—some say three hundred—mistakes of pronunciation in reciting the Qur'an. To him is ascribed the collecting of the Mu'allaqat. No '' diwan'' of his is extant, though he composed verse of his own and probably a good deal of what he ascribed to earlier poets. Biography in William McGuckin de Slane's trans. of

Ibn Khallikan Aḥmad bin Muḥammad bin Ibrāhīm bin Abū Bakr ibn Khallikān) ( ar, أحمد بن محمد بن إبراهيم بن أبي بكر ابن خلكان; 1211 – 1282), better known as Ibn Khallikān, was a 13th century Shafi'i Islamic scholar w ...

, vol. i. pp 470–474, and many stories are told of him in the Kitab ul-Aghdni, vol. v. pp 164–175.

Citations

---- {{DEFAULTSORT:Ar-Rawiya, Hammad 8th-century deaths 8th-century Iranian people 8th-century scholars Iranian scholars Year of birth unknown People from Kufa 8th-century people from the Umayyad Caliphate Daylamites 8th-century Arabic writers 8th-century people from the Abbasid Caliphate